A History of Erik Lensherr
by Aquamarine Stag
Summary: Erik Lensherr is a prisoner of the Nazi organization known as Hydra. Johann Schmidt is the Nazi super soldier who has become obsessed with him. WARNING: Deals with violence, torture and assault. No like, no read.
1. Chapter 1 Erik Lensherr

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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"Stop."

Erik Lensherr freezes where he stands, holding the tray. His hands are shaking; on the silver tray the coffee cups flutter on the saucers, clinking softly. He keeps his eyes fixed on the tray. His heart is rattling under the loose, thin cloth of his skin.

Across from him, on the sofa, Johann Schmidt sits back expansively. He looks at Erik; it is a heavy, suffocatingly sensual gaze that he tries to pass off as a playful flirtation. He smiles at Erik. His lips pull too far back. His teeth are white as bleached bones.

"Come here, Erik," he says.

Erik swallows the hard lump in his throat. He is already in a state of panic, joints flooded with adrenaline, muscles coiled and twitching. He approaches him, neither slowly nor quickly, his eyes fixed on the floor. Schmidt leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, hands clasped earnestly in thought.

"I wonder, why do I like you so much Erik? Why do I like you so much better than all my others?" he asks. He waits a moment, and perhaps he's curious if Erik will respond but Erik stays silent. Schmidt's gaze pours its burning oil over his body. "I thought to myself this morning that it had to be hormonal, but that was a momentary conclusion based off the way your hair looked in the morning light." His attempt to be poetic is flat and unimaginative. It strikes Erik as dull and cliché. Under his panic, he shelters a proud contempt for Schmidt's simplicity.

Schmidt touches the soft braid of hair. Hair is a rare treasure in the camp.

"So glad Dr. Klaus let you keep it."

Johann Schmidt is not his real name, anymore than Klaus Schmidt is the real name of the doctor who conducts his experiments on Erik. "Schmidt" is the last name that all of Hydra's high level scientists use; and to distinguish themselves, they call each other "Dr. Klaus" or "Dr. Johann". They have not used their true names in a long time.

Dr. Johann "Schmidt" looks up at him.

"It isn't that, though. Physical beauty is compelling, but this is something more…ethereal." Schmidt drops the braid. He glances at the table, then picks up a Warsing cookie and smiles at Erik, holding it up to him. "Would you like one? You can have one, and all I want in return is a kiss."

Erik doesn't answer. He doesn't feel hunger anymore, because hunger is all he feels, it is all any of them feel. Silence. The clock ticks an empty, hollow minute by. Schmidt's smile fades to a baring of teeth. Finally, he shrugs.

"Suit yourself," he says. He drops the cookie back into the plate and amuses himself, toying with the end of Erik's braid. "Maybe I like you so much because you think I'm a liar. You think I'm a liar, don't you?" Erik doesn't answer. There is no answer he can give that Schmidt won't punish him for. After a minute, Schmidt chooses to go on.

"You refused the cookie because you don't think I'll really give it to you. You think I will take what _I_ want and default on payment. Maybe that's why I like you, because you are so shrewd and practical." He laughs. "You have the Jew's greed _and_ the Jew's prudishness."

Dr. Johann Schmidt touches the braid again. Erik's silver hair is a source of pride for both Dr. Klaus and Dr. Johann. When the young man arrived at the camp, it was black. But since Dr. Klaus, Dr. Johann, and Hydra began their experiments on him, the hair has turned brilliant platinum.

Of course, this has nothing to do with Hydra or its experiments. It's just the natural development of Erik Lensherr's unique mutation. But Hydra has taken credit for it, declared it a successful—if, as yet, induplicable—attempt to turn Erik's inferior Jewish features into high Aryan ones.

Johann wraps the hair around his hand, sliding it through his fingers. Erik gazes at the floor, eyes narrowing reflexively. Schmidt's constant attention terrifies him, because it is always accompanied by the threat of violence. But under his fear, Schmidt's cruel, ironic sadism disgusts him and his unimaginativeness and psychological simplicity are contemptible.

"Such a cold, pretty face," Schmidt says. "Why don't you talk to me?"

Silence.

"I think I know why you don't talk to me," Schmidt says, tugging playfully on the hair. "Because you're proud. That's it, isn't it? It doesn't matter that I have more power than any man in the world right now, _you_ still think you're too good for me. Your silence is just your snobbery talking." The braid slips silkily through his fingers. "I think that's why I like you so much more than all my others. There's no pain or reward that could make you sell yourself; because you are too proud to _ever_ sell yourself. They all, eventually, gave in to me. But you won't. You won't even deign to speak to me."

Erik stares at the floor. His chest is tight with a panic that doesn't quite manage to completely eclipse his loathing. He feels almost that he has escaped. The conversation has not gone in the cruel, cat-and-mouse fashion that Schmidt enjoys. By not answering, Erik has taken the fun out of Schmidt's brutal romantic teasing. Finally, Schmidt leans back on the couch.

"Back to your work," he says, with a touch of irritation.

Erik turns back to the tray. He feels liquid with relief. He starts to pour out the coffee when he falls to the ground. That's how it seems; as though, without warning or reason, he just falls to the ground.

Then pain blooms in his temple. His head throbs, his vision going red at the edges.

He rolls onto his stomach and tries to lift himself up when he sees Schmidt's boot and feels another crack against his head that drops him to the floor again in a crimson haze of pain. There is another shattering blow against his back and now he realizes it is Schmidt, hitting him with the butt of his revolver. Another blow and Erik lays on the floor, gasping, fighting to stay awake.

Schmidt puts his Luger back in its holster and grabs Erik by the shoulders. He lifts him up and throws him onto the sofa.

Erik groans against the cushions. He is awake and conscious of what is happening, but he's disoriented. What is happening doesn't completely make sense. It is like everything: the camp, the death, the ash clouds, all of its still seems unreal, as if it can't be true in a world that claims to be sane, rational and civilized.

Schmidt removes his black jacket and tosses it over the back of the chair. He kicks Erik's legs apart and kneels down on the sofa, between his knees.

"The less you fight me, the less I'll hurt you," Schmidt says. "But after you've been broken in, you won't be so reluctant to give in willingly. Very soon, you'll come to enjoy it." Schmidt runs his fingers up under the thin cloth of Erik's shirt. His right hand touches Erik's cheek and feels tears.

Schmidt is not an opportunist. He's not like other soldiers, who take advantage of the impunity they have to exploit their prisoners. Johann Schmidt isn't a philanderer with his hands in a cookie jar; he is a megalomaniac. Above all, he desires power.

"No," Erik can hear himself whimpering. His voice is pitiful, choked with tears, and somewhere behind his terror and desperation he holds himself in contempt for begging because begging is what Schmidt wants, what he craves, the powerlessness that he thrives on. "Please, please no."

"Yes," Schmidt mocks softly, reaching for the clasp of his trousers. "Please, please yes."

Then something unexpected happens. It is nowhere in the field of Schmidt's intentions, nowhere in the realm of possibilities he has scripted out.

There is a sound of tearing wallpaper. Schmidt raises his head in time to see the metal shield of the Reich that hangs on the wall go flying towards him. It strikes him in the head, knocking him onto the floor, unconscious.

Erik stumbles up from the sofa, sobbing. He wants to run, but there is absolutely nowhere he can go. He cannot hide from Schmidt in the barbed wire fences of the camp. Schmidt will come for him, and he will repay Erik's resistance with savagery. He will have the pain and tears he wants.

Erik collapses in the hall outside, knocking over an endtable. The sound brings Dr. Klaus out of his office.

"Gott in himmel," he mutters, touching Erik's face gently. "Go sit in my office. I'll clean this up before it gets infected."


	2. Chapter 2 The Cookie

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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Dr. Klaus cleans off Erik's face and diagnoses a concussion.

"I did not mean to hurt him," Erik keeps mumbling. He's disgusted with himself for how he is pleading his defense when Schmidt was the aggressor. Self preservation is an awful, abasing thing.

"I'll take care of him," Dr. Klaus says.

After a few minutes he leaves. He goes into the room down the hall with the sofa, the table, and the coffee that has now grown cold. Erik catches a glimpse of Johann Schmidt sitting on the sofa, holding an ice pack to his head. Dr. Klaus stands in front of him and for a second they are quiet. Then they both burst out laughing.

"You're going to get yourself killed for a skinny Jew? What's the matter with you?" Dr. Klaus laughs, shaking his head.

"What can I say?" Johann asks with a smile. "He didn't want the cookie."


	3. Chapter 3 Stitches

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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Dr. Nathaniel Essex sits across from Erik. The English geneticist, with the pomaded black hair and strange reddish brown eyes, impresses Erik with the handsome profile of a Hollywood actor. His crisp, deep British voice is brisk but gentle, conditioned by years of working at the bedside of patients.

"Did you do it on purpose?" he asks.

"No," Erik mumbles.

There is a moment of silence as the doctor organizes his swabs, selecting one to clean the cut before he stitches it shut.

"Why not?" he asks. It is casual, elegant, it almost doesn't seem to be an invitation to violence. Erik gazes at him.

"I don't know how."

"Rubbish," Nathaniel says.

"I can't—"

"Rub_bish_," Nathaniel says more deliberately, brushing antiseptic on the needle. "There is no difference in kind between the voluntary and involuntary motion of a muscle. It follows that if the involuntary response is there, so is the _ability,_ and all that you're missing is the ability to activate it. Were you conscious when it happened?"

"Yes."

"Then you know what the action feels like, where its nexus is located, where it originates," Nathaniel says. "Follow it to its source and place yourself at the origin of the action."

There is something devastating in the simplicity of Essex diagnoses. It is that simplicity that all Dr. Johann's and Dr. Klaus' experiments have been missing. Nathaniel glances at him. Erik thinks he can see the dawning realization on Erik's face.

"Excellent," he says. "Then next time, you know what to do."

"What?" Erik asks. His voice is thick with exhaustion. Nathaniel doesn't pause, or stutter, doesn't even blink.

"Next time," he says, "you kill him."


	4. Chapter 4 Johann Schmidt

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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Dr. Johann is not always at the camp. He spends a large part of his time abroad, working at one or another of Hydra's laboratories in Germany, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia. It is testament to the absolute savagery of Johann Schmidt's nature that even the camp breathes easier when he is absent.

The camp is a machine producing death. It grinds on, immense, unstoppable and indifferent, yet ultimately impersonal and lifeless.

When Johann Schmidt returns, the camp is possessed by a spirit of cruelty, hatred and violence.

Johann Schmidt is the Third Reich's super-soldier. His strength and speed exceed what is possible for a human being not altered by the intelligence and ingenuity of man. As a strategist, he has masterminded the largest invasions of Europe, gathering each conquest into one vision of world domination. As a scientist, he has excelled the Americans and Soviets in the production of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare, and in the genetic engineering of human beings.

When Dr. Johann Schmidt returns to the camp—one of Hydra's most important centers of experimentation and data gathering on human subjects—usually he makes his presence known in a barbaric display of his absolute authority. One summer, he went up to the gun tower and, with high powered rifle, shot six prisoners, four guards, a delivery man and one German shepherd. For seven hours, prisoners and guards alike operated in a state of strained, quiet terror, afraid to cross the muddy, open yard.

When the guards in the tower, the only ones to witness the whole spree, were asked why Herr Schmidt finally stopped, only one—a young man named Ernst—was brave enough to answer.

"I don't know exactly," he said. "He didn't give a reason. He didn't say anything to us. After a while he just seemed to get bored with it."

For Erik Lensherr, Johann Schmidt's return holds a very private terror.


	5. Chapter 5 The Bargain

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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Deep midnight in the medical barracks, where Hydra's prisoners are housed. There is no heat. It is deathly cold. Erik curls up in a painful, dreamless rest. He wakes every few minutes for a moment, then slips back into the shallows of sleep. When the lock is turned, he is instantly awake, in a fully conscious panic.

Dr. Johann appears in the doorway, dark reddish-brown hair loose, his cap held under his arm. His pale blue eyes catch the light like coins. He smiles at Erik.

"Awake? Wonderful! Come, get up, come sit with me in the house."

Erik gets up, neither quickly nor slowly, and follows Johann Schmidt. They have to cross the lane, covered in snow. The cold burns through Erik's thin clothes.

Inside Schmidt's quarters, a fire is already going. He takes off his wool coat and offers Erik a place by the fire. Erik sits down stiffly. Johann sits opposite him, in one of the high-backed chairs, and takes Erik's icy hands in his.

"You've made quite an impression on me," Schmidt says with his cruel smile. "Since I left, I've found myself thinking of you at odd times and places. I went to a cabaret in Berlin and there was a tango I would have sworn was done to represent you and I, with the girl always thrusting her partner away just to draw him back. Just like you—thrusting me away but then drawing me back."

Schmidt reaches out to brush a strand of hair away from Erik's cheek. Erik's disgust for the monster the Fuhrer calls 'the Red Skull' burns like bile in the back of his throat.

"Nothing to say?" Johann asks. Then, "It doesn't matter. We'll talk about something else."

His persistent smile makes Erik sick. He knows that Schmidt has a trap he's waiting to spring. Schmidt rubs his hands, kneading his heat into Erik's cold skin.

"I think we got off—or didn't get off—on the wrong note," Schmidt says in his lewd, ironic way. "I have something better for my proud, shrewd little Jew. You know, I'm sure, that the winter weakens our work force to the point of uselessness. A full liquidation of all the prisoners and an influx of new ones is completely appropriate and completely within my power."

Erik steels himself, staring silently at the ground, waiting for the trap to spring.

"But I think instead I'll give them to you as a present. I'm trying to make up with you, for my roughness before. Don't you see that?"

This is a lie, all the more ugly because it is so transparently a lie. Schmidt doesn't have the slightest interest in pleasing Erik, just in winning a battle he feels he lost by submitting to his power a prisoner who he feels escaped him.

Erik stares silently at the floor. Schmidt waits a minute, before he springs the trap.

"So I will spare everyone in the camp from liquidation," he says. "For you. Don't think of it as a bargain. It's a gift." He cups Erik's face in his hand. "And your gift to me will be yourself. You will come sleep in my room when I'm here." He leans forward to kiss Erik; Erik jerks his head away. Schmidt pulls back, lips curling. "Then you know what happens."

For a minute, a full minute, Erik is silent. Then he raises his eyes and Schmidt thinks he catches the flash of triumph.

"I thought about this bargain already," Erik says, referring to it deliberately as the very thing it is—a bargain—the very thing Schmidt did not want to admit that it was. "We're all going to die here. We can die of hunger, or tuberculosis, or typhus, or we can die because one of us says no to one of you. I think the last one is best. So kill us all."

He says it with complete calm but in reality, he's ready for this to be the last thing he ever says. Johann Schmidt has a notoriously bad temper and Erik is ready for Schmidt to beat him to death in front of the fire.

For a second everything is sublimely silent and still.

Schmidt's lips part. He isn't smiling or sneering, but laughing.

"You anticipated my move!" he says with delight. "You are so wonderful, Erik. You have the Jew's cunning. No, no that is selling you short. You are far more intelligent than the rabble. You anticipated my next move and that is testament to how simplistic my strategy was but also to how clever you are." He grins at Erik. "I suppose that it was obvious, wasn't it?" For a second, he thinks he sees embarrassment in Schmidt's face. "But it's a gift and so it's yours. You can go."

Erik sits still for a second. Then he gets up, neither slowly nor quickly, and goes to the door. Schmidt follows behind him. For the agonizing minutes it takes him to walk across the fire-lit living room, he expects to feel the pistol against his head. But it never comes. He gets to the door and out into the snow.

But when he crosses the lane, he finds the door to the prisoner's barracks locked with a chain and padlock. He turns around. Schmidt stands in the doorway of his quarters, chuckling softly.

Erik's body is wracked with cold. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. This is an act of cruelty, to break Erik down; or to kill him, if he refuses to break.

"Come in and spend the night with me, if you get too cold and your pride will allow it," Schmidt says. Then he shuts the door.

Erik sinks into the snow beside the prisoner's barracks. He has already made his mind up to survive the night as he collapses. He curls up, clasping his arms around his chest. The cold bites into his bones. His body trembles violently but his mind feels calm and empty, with that clarity that comes from hatred.

Then he feels the blanket dropped onto his shoulders. He looks up at the strange, reddish eyes of Dr. Essex.

"Come inside," he says in his crisp, deep voice. He helps Erik to rise, puts one arm around Erik's shoulders and leads him briskly towards the door of his quarters.

They are inside less than a minute, and Dr. Essex has barely had time to stoke the fire, when Schmidt starts banging on the English doctor's door. Essex straightens up and motions Erik into the bedroom. Then he shuts the door and locks it.

Erik goes to the door and kneels down by the lock, listening.

"Where is he?" Schmidt says.

"Asleep, if he's smart," Essex's voice is like burning lye.

"Where—?" he hears Schmidt's heavy footfalls nearing the door.

"Get a hold of yourself," Essex says. "All of our data on mutants is wrapped up in him. You kill him now, you will repent it later!"

Erik swallows, listening to the tense, heavy silence. He hears Schmidt walking around the living room, but his steps are calmer, more aware.

"I must look such a madman right now," Schmidt laughs. Unlike Dr. Klaus, Nathaniel does not excuse him by laughing with him. "Love makes fools of us all."

"Love? And that's what you're going with, is it? Fine," Essex says briskly. Erik hears glasses clinking and liquid pouring. "Have a brandy."

"Thank you," Schmidt says. Then, "You're good to remind me of my priorities. All our data, our experiments, our understanding of mutations."

"Quite."

"It's all in him."

"Quite."

There is more heavy silence, softened by the sound of ice clinking in the glasses.

"I would have regretted losing him."

"Indeed."

"He draws me in even as he's thrusting me away," Schmidt says. "Its not separate, its not even like I thought it was—a dance, back and forth, thrust and return. Its one single movement."

"Indeed," Essex says again.

More silence, laden with Schmidt's tapering wrath and Essex quiet disdain.

"I think I should sleep," Schmidt says. "I've only just arrived. I think the constant traveling is taking its toll on me."

"I quite understand."

He hears Schmidt's footsteps as he walks to the door. A moment later, Essex opens the door. He hands Erik a blanket and motions to him to step out into the living room.

"Sleep by the fire," he says. "On the sofa, if you wish." Then he disappears into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Alone in the living room, Erik unlatches the door and steps out into the snow. He crosses the dark, wintersoft lane in premeditated calm until he's standing in front of the door to the prisoner's barracks.

He stands before the door, focusing on the metal lock and chain. Essex words loop through his head. _There is no difference in kind between a voluntary and an involuntary action. Place yourself at the nexus. Next time, you kill him._

The lock spasms and the chain rattles. He thinks that he can feel it then, and he wishes with all his strength for the lock's tumblers to spin. He hears the metal pins clicking in place. The lock falls to the ground with a soft thud, disappearing into the snow.

Erik tries to lift it using only his power, but he's lost the thread of his power. He can't find the metal lock. He's exhausted and freezing cold.

But the lock is unlocked. Not broken. Unlocked.

He picks it up with his hand and walks across the lane once more, and drops the lock outside Schmidt's door.

Then he returns to the prisoner's barracks and falls into a deathlike sleep while the snow falls outside. The other prisoners lay in the bed beside him, to keep him warm.


	6. Chapter 6 Cookies

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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The next day, Erik awakens to boxes of Warsing cookies on the steps of the prisoner's barracks with a card that reads: 'Dispose of them as you like. No repayment necessary.' Erik casts a hatefilled glance at the quarters where Schmidt stays, and kicks the boxes inside.

He gives them to the prisoners he shares a barracks with, but doesn't touch a single one.


	7. Chapter 7 The Heads of Hydra

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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To the other scientists working on understanding the nature of mutant abilities, Dr. Johann Schmidt's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and bizarre. It is no secret even among the other scientists that Schmidt is insane: a psychopath and a sadist, one who alternates between extreme discipline and a total absence of impulse control. But his obsession with his prisoner is beginning to make even people who are used to his depraved nature just a little uncomfortable.

First, he moves Erik into his quarters. Since Erik is, officially speaking, a test subject, this is highly unorthodox and makes everyone just a little squeamish, rather like giving a name to a hamster you intend to dissect.

In the mornings, he comes in with an arm around Erik's waist, smiling and joking with the other doctors, as if it is a given that he and Erik are an item. They leave together at night, and Johann will gallantly insist on taking evening walks with Erik as if they a couple strolling by the Rhine.

At least once a week, Erik comes in covered with bruises, having been badly beaten the night before. Johann usually bears some injury from the altercation: wounds from metal objects, ranging from blunt force injuries to slash wounds from knives. On these occasions, he behaves with extreme gentleness and contrtition to Erik, doing everything to please him.

Essex is less surprised. One evening, over brandy, he tells the other doctors plainly that this is a nearly textbook example of a violently abusive domestic relationship.

Dr. Klaus spins his brand glass absently.

"You know," he says finally. "People say—even in the Reich's upper echelons—that if you're even a little bit normal, you won't really like Johann Schmidt. I've always been friendly with him, but sometimes he's a bit extreme."

"Extreme?" Essex sneers. "No, starting a ground war in Asia is extreme. Schmidt isn't extreme, he's a flailing lunatic."

"It's not that I object to his personal affairs," Dr. Zola says. "It's not even that I object to—to bisexuality or to—whatever it is, I just, its making us all seem—"

"I think Dr. Zola is trying to put delicately something that is best put bluntly," Dr. Essex says. "Schmidt is causing us a bit of an image problem. People are starting to talk."

Dr. Klaus rolls his eyes.

"People always talk," Dr. Klaus says.

"Yes, but they are starting to say things, Klaus, unflattering things, such as 'Johann Schmidt has lost what little good sense he once had' and 'Johann Schmidt is waging his own private war on mental health' or (and this is my personal favorite) 'if you stab him and hit an artery, stand back and to the side, because his blood spurts out in a stream of angry crows'."

"I've heard the crow thing from more than one person," Zola says. "More than one _credible_ person."

"I know," Klaus says finally. "I know, I do. But Hydra is flourishing under his direction, the Fuhrer is one hundred percent committed to him. So what do you want me to do?"

"Can't we maybe—I don't know—is there someone else we can ask?" Dr. Zola says, timidly shifting responsibility.

"No one is going to stand up to the Red Skull," Klaus says. Then, "I'm certainly not going to say anything."

Essex gazes coldly at them.

"You have the constitution and fortitude of wet, shivering field mice, both of you," he says finally. "We have at least one good ground on which to object to his behavior, and that is that Lensherr is the whole crux of all our experiments. If he dies, or is compromised, all our data becomes null and void." He sips his brandy. "Might I suggest we lay out a few ground rules? Such as that there be no extreme change in his hormone or adrenaline levels due to sexual activity or violence? You know that _will _affect our research."

In reality, Dr. Essex is there working on his own projects: he is searching for the genetic key to unlocking diseases. He thinks everything Schmidt and Zola do is a tragic pseudo-science. But his grounds sound quite plausible and the two other scientists eagerly agree.

"There's still the matter of—you know—" Zola says stutteringly.

"Someone has to _tell_ him," Dr. Klaus says ominously.

"Oh for God's sake, I'll do it and hang you both," Essex says impatiently.

He has to pour himself another glass of brandy just to unclench his jaw.


	8. Chapter 8 Attraction and Repulsion

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is riff and parody.**

**Warnings: Deals with the subject of torture, violence and assault. Also, Johann Schmidt is a Nazi and expresses Nazi views. Because he's evil.**

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And the next day, he lays out his argument in the brisk, commonsense fashion of the British. Schmidt is surprisingly receptive.

"We have the occasional fight, which becomes a little heated," Schmidt says. "But I haven't forced him to do anything. I'm a changed man, Dr. Essex. I want to take Erik with me to Argentina or America, after the war. I want him to learn to love me."

Most of this is a lie, but some of it isn't.

Johann Schmidt sleeps with Erik at night but that is all they do—sleep. Most of the time, neither of them even undress. Johann lays on the bed in his uniform, holding Erik against him. Sometimes he opens his coat, pulling Erik against his shirted chest so that the coat lays over him like a blanket, but that is all.

Erik hates sleeping there, but he has no choice. Refusal would earn terrible reprisals. Instead, he falls asleep thinking of little things he hates about Schmidt: the harsh smell of Schmidt's cologne and the way he breathes shallowly and rapidly in his nightmarish sleep.

It isn't that Schmidt is 'a changed man.' He hasn't graduated from using force, not by any means. But whenever he tries to use force, the same thing happens that happened the very first time: Erik's fear and hatred and anguish become so intense that metal is shorn free from its braces and beats him back. Erik has a minimal conscious control of his powers; but when Schmidt tries to force him, his power explodes. It leaves them both battered and injured. Conquest becomes impossible.

Schmidt has adopted a new ploy. He insists that he wants Erik to fall in love with him, that he craves his company, that he finds sleep difficult without him. He swears that he will take Erik away with him when the war is over.

This strategy is designed to so accustom Erik to Johann that he loses some of his hatred and fear. When that happens, Schmidt knows he will be able to use force—and submit Erik to himself as often as he desires.

He has, of course, underestimated Erik's proud, unbending hatred. There is no amount of compulsory companionship that could lessen Erik's hatred. But Schmidt does not yet realize this.

It might not matter anyway. Schmidt has never had anyone fight him so hard and with such determination. He's never been so attracted to someone. Erik has completely absorbed his romantic attention; he can't imagine wanting anyone else this much. He fully intends to take Erik with him to Argentina or America. They will do this dance of repulsion and attraction all their lives.

Until Erik breaks or Johann is dead.


End file.
